The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has suspended consideration of IBF Financial Holdings Co’s (國票金控) proposal to fully acquire EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰銀行), as IBF Financial had failed to address four of the commission’s doubts about the deal, Banking Bureau Director-General Sherri Chuang (莊琇媛) said yesterday.
The four doubts regard IBF’s financial strength, its funding resources, the benefits from consolidation and job protection, Chuang said.
IBF Financial can refile its application after it fully addresses these issues, Chuang said.
Photo: CNA
“We noticed that nearly half of the company’s board of directors did not support the merger, and some lawsuits have even been filed amid disputes,” Chuang said. “Under these circumstances, the acquisition of EnTie bank might not be beneficial for IBF Financial’s operation.”
Seven members of IBF Financial’s 13-seat board voted for the acquisition, with six against, she said.
The commission said that IBF Financial should ideally have support from a larger majority of its board members’ and shareholders before reopening the application, she said.
As IBF Financial has invested in the online Rakuten International Commercial Bank Co (樂天國際商銀), and both the online bank and EnTie bank might need capital injection in the future, the FSC questioned whether IBF Financial would have sufficient capital to support both banking units, Chuang said.
IBF Financial plans to acquire EnTie’s shares through a cash-and-share swap. Each EnTie shareholder would receive NT$9.46673 in cash and 0.493344 class A preferred shares, which could be converted to IBF’s common shares after one year for each EnTie share, corporate data showed.
However, the commission is concerned that the swap plan could weaken IBF Financial’s shareholding structure, as the financial service provider did not receive overwhelming support from its board members for the merger, and it might need to seek investors to subscribe to as high as 26 percent of the new shares that are to be issued to fund the merger, Chuang said.
“IBF did not clearly explain who the investors would be. If most of the new shares are to be bought by specific individuals, the buyers could become major shareholders. We would need to review the shareholders’ qualifications,” Chuang said.
IBF Financial said that it would talk with the regulator and make a case for the deal.
EnTie Bank said that its operation would continue unchanged despite the FSC’s rejection of the merger, it said.
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
RESPONSE: The Japanese Ministry of Finance might have to intervene in the currency markets should the yen keep weakening toward the 160 level against the US dollar Japan’s chief currency official yesterday sent a warning on recent foreign exchange moves, after the yen weakened against the US dollar following Friday last week’s Bank of Japan (BOJ) decision. “We’re seeing one-directional, sudden moves especially after last week’s monetary policy meeting, so I’m deeply concerned,” Japanese Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Atsushi Mimura told reporters. “We’d like to take appropriate responses against excessive moves.” The central bank on Friday raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest in 30 years, but Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda chose to keep his options open rather than bolster the yen,
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their
Global server shipments are expected to surge to 15 million units next year, from 4 million units this year, with artificial intelligence (AI) servers accounting for about 30 percent, driven by massive capital spending by major cloud service providers, the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC) said on Thursday last week. Major cloud service providers — including Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc, Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Meta Platforms Inc — are projected to budget US$450 million for capital expenditure next year, up from US$400 million this year, MIC ICT [information and communications technology] Industry Research Center director Edward Lin
RSS